


It Touches Everything

by fraternite



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, this started as a meme but became a story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-22
Updated: 2015-09-22
Packaged: 2018-04-22 20:04:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4848716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fraternite/pseuds/fraternite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Everything about the backstory I invented for him is diminished and subverted by the rules of being dead . . . The dead are not the living: the living are cumulative, additive, growing, changing, becoming more of themselves. The dead are subtractive, decaying, simplifying … rotting."  --Maggie Stiefvater on tumblr</p>
<p>A 10-genres meme where even the genres are diminished and subverted by that overwhelming fact: Noah Czerney is dead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It Touches Everything

_** 1\. Angst ** _

“I’m afraid,” Noah whispers. He swallows hard and makes himself go on. “Things are changing. I don’t feel like my same self, like how I used to be; I don’t know what it is exactly, but something’s wrong. I keep losing time. Forgetting things.”

The white moonlight on the floor flickers out, and then streams across the model Henrietta again as the wind blows scraps of cloud in front of the moon. The dripping of a tap in the bathroom echoes in the cavernous apartment.

“When we first woke up the ley line, it was so exciting--I had so much more energy to pull from, I could _do_ so much more. It was like a fire lit in a steam engine; I finally had the power I needed to _be_ and move and change. But now it feels like I’m burning.”

He shivers. “It’s stronger than I am--the ley line. It’s pulling on me all the time, and I think--” His voice catches for a moment, but he pushes on. “I think it’s pulling away pieces of me.”

Outside in the parking lot, something blows into something else with a bang. Gansey shifts in his sleep, pressing his face deeper into the pillow. In his bedroom, Ronan’s headphones churn the sounds of electric guitars and uillean pipes into unhearing ears. Adam’s in Noah’s bed tonight, sleeping like a log, worn out from another twelve-hour shift.

Noah lets the words fall again into the darkness: “I’m afraid.”

As the living inhabitants of Monmout Manufacturing sleep on, Noah perches on the arm of an ancient armchair and whispers the words he’ll never have the courage to say out loud.

 

_**2\. Crack** _

The first one is when he tries to visit his old address and finds himself in front of a house he doesn’t recognize.

 

_**3\. First Kiss** _

Blue is crying a little bit and Noah’s pretty sure that’s not supposed to happen when you’re kissing. But her hands are clenched tightly in his rumbled sweater, and she pushes closer to him on Gansey’s bed, and the way her mouth moves against his says _please please don’t go away._

Noah recognizes the feeling.

 

_**4\. Future** _

He wonders about the future, sometimes. What happens to him when everyone else grows up and moves on with their lives? He can’t expect them to be tied down forever for his sake. Blue and Adam will go off to college and become great; Gansey will find Glendower and become happy. Ronan might stay on--probably will--for the Barns and his family, but even so, there’s still the inescapable distance that time will put between them.

When he feels more stable, Noah wonders how long a ghost can last. Will he still be here in ten years? In twenty years? In a century?

(Will he still be here in ten months?)

He imagines himself wandering the halls of an abandoned Aglionby in his wrinkled uniform, sitting alone in empty lecture halls, and wonders if maybe it isn’t better this way.

 

_**5\. Comfort/Hurt** _

“Am I like that always? All--all strange . . . and scary?” Noah doesn’t seem to be crying--there’s no telltale hitch in his voice, his shoulders are almost unnervingly steady--but tears are streaming steadily down his cheeks. It makes him look even more unreal, but Blue forces back the thought.

“Not always,” she tells him quickly. “Some days--a lot of days--are like normal. Like Saturday, when we went up to The Barns, and you and Ronan were singing that song.”

Noah cracks half a smile. “Squash one, squash two . . .?”

“No, the other one. That Celtic song--it was called the Bonny Swans or something?” When Noah still looks confused, she hums a few bars of it. “It was pretty.”

Noah’s eyes grow wide. “I don’t know that song,” he whispers. “That--that’s not me.”

 

_**6\. Fluff** _

They go to the park to blow off steam. They all need it. Declan’s been giving Ronan a hard time about his grades; Blue’s house is too full of cousins; Adam’s overwhelmed by Cabeswater’s constant whispering his ears. Gansey just is wound tight with his desperate need to make them all happy, and his inability to ever truly succeed.

It’s a glorious early-October day--the air is just cold enough for the bright sun to be pleasant instead of oppressive, and the leaves have just started to turn. The air smells like wood smoke and cut grass, the smells of summer and fall mingled together in a way that makes them all feel more alive than ever.

They race each other to the playground, throwing themselves onto the equipment as if they didn’t outgrow it years ago. Blue hangs upside-down from the jungle gym, clips and pins falling from her hair into the woodchips. Gansey balances on the top of the structure, arms flung wide to the window and face turned up to the sky. Ronan insists on pushing Adam and Noah on the swings, launching them higher and higher until Adam protests that the swingset can’t stand the stress and drags his feet to stop.

Noah doesn’t quit, though, and Ronan goes on pushing him. There’s a moment of weightlessness at the top of each arc when everything is sky and sun and Gansey’s delighted laughter below him, and for that instant Noah can’t feel the emptiness inside.

 

_**7\. Humor** _

Q: What happens when a ghost gets lost in the fog?

A: He is mist.

 

_**8\. Last Kiss** _

They can tell it’s Noah--really Noah--now only because of how faint he is. He’s a wisp of smoke, the shadow of an echo, the mere suggestion of a boy. When he’s . . . Not Noah . . . he’s much more solid.

Ronan thinks this is the cruelest part of the whole sick mess, but he saves the anger for when Noah isn’t around. In the rare moments when they get the real Noah, these days, his voice is soft, like when he’s talking to the dream cows at the Barns, or to Chainsaw when he thinks no one’s watching.

Noah doesn’t seem to hear, and Ronan has to repeat the question. “Feeling okay, man?”

“I’m tired,” Noah says finally. The utter weariness in his voice brings tears to Blue’s eyes, stirs up the anger inside Adam, brings up memories of hotel rooms in Wales in Gansey’s mind. They stare at each other around the circle.

Ronan steps forward, putting his arms around Noah’s barely-there shoulders. Gently, as if kissing a crucifix, he presses his lips to his forehead. “It’s okay.”

 

_**9\. Wildcard** _

They find him on the swingset in back of Blue’s house. He’s not moving his body, but the swing is going back and forth all the same. It moves at a constant speed, not speeding up in the middle or slowing down at the end, like a mechanical model meant to represent a swing. Like an old memory, faded and put back together wrong.

It’s been six weeks, and they’d almost given up hope of ever getting him back. When Blue sees him in the backyard, slowly swinging back and forth, her heart leaps into her throat and she runs for the screen door, an excited greeting on her lips.

But something stops her, and she goes upstairs instead. She calls Gansey. They exchange a few words. In fifteen minutes, the Camaro is pulling noisily into the driveway, Adam in the backseat, Ronan already tumbling out the passenger side. Together, they walk into the backyard and approach the swingset. Blue slips a hand into Gansey’s, and Adam and Ronan pretend not to notice. The figure on the swing is pale, with messy hair and a rumpled sweater and a long nose that’s achingly familiar.

He turns to them and smiles, and his eyes are wrong.


End file.
